Editor's Notebook

By ART CULLEN

The Russians responded to economic and political unrest in Ukraine by sending in the marines. Iowa should respond by sending in the agronomists, livestock specialists and infrastructure engineers. Turning swords into plowshares worked when Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev visited the Garst Farms near Coon Rapids more than a half-century ago, paving the way for detente. It can work again today.

But the costume is safely hidden from vigilante guns

By ART CULLEN

It was a dark, if not stormy, late July night 35 years ago when a nine-year-old girl from Ottosen in Kossuth County spotted a “short, hairy, ape-like animal with fangs and deep-set eyes” that stood in shadows a few inches away and growled.

Segebart thinks redemption centers can stay open

By ART CULLEN

Best news of the week: Sen. Mark Segebart, R-Vail, says work activity centers probably will survive a vote by the Senate Human Resources Committee to be included as “core services” required under a new mental health funding bill.

By ART CULLEN

Why should Hillary Clinton not run for president?

Let me count the reasons.

She cannot win Iowa or Colorado.

By ART CULLEN

Advocates for immigration reform, President Obama chief among them, continue to delude themselves that they can pass a comprehensive bill this year.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Sunday that such legislation is “clearly in doubt.”

By ART CULLEN

How times have changed. When I was born in Storm Lake 56 years ago the town was but 7,000 people. It has grown by fully 50% since.

A passenger train ran past the depot just south of our newspaper office (then Wisconsin Lumber, one of three or four in town).

By ART CULLEN

You could probably cut with a dull knife the tension in the air of the House tanning salon these days.

Steve King could not resist the mocking comeback at House Speaker John Boehner that was too cute by half.

By ART CULLEN

Gov. Terry Branstad was doing his level best Monday to play hospitable Iowan to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey before the assembled statehouse press corps. Let’s wait to see how this bridge scandal plays out. Christie was direct in his own press conference, expressed sadness and disappointment, and chopped off a couple heads for good measure.

By ART CULLEN

The check should arrive any day now in the mail.                   

By ART CULLEN

This will be a year for politics, 2014. We have a governor’s race, a contest for an open US Senate seat, and another for an open congressional seat around Des Moines. And then there will be the Buena Vista County Sheriff’s election.